Training a New Fabricator: A 90-Day Plan That Actually Works

The shops that grow are the shops that train. Here's the plan we wish we'd had when we hired our first fabricator.

Week 1-2: Safety + materials

PPE, lifting, lockout-tagout. Every material in your inventory — what it is, how it cuts, what kills it. Quiz at the end of week two.

Eased and beveled edges only. Shadow your best fabricator. Cut scrap until they can hit a straight line within 1mm.

Run programmed jobs with supervision. Don't let them write G-code yet. Focus on tool changes, work-holding, and reading the screen for problems.

Polish progression, defect identification, the rake-light inspection. By day 90 they should be polishing a complete kitchen unsupervised.

Don't put a new hire on installs in the first 90 days. Customer-facing work requires soft skills you can't train in a quarter.